About Mechon Mamre and Our Work

"Mechon Mamre" is Hebrew for "the Mamre Institute". Mamre is a place name for the place where Abraham our patriarch lived (see Genesis 13,18). Abraham is the forefather of both Jews and Gentiles who live by the instructions of God, and our site is intended for Jew and Gentile alike.

Mechon Mamre is a small group of observant Jewish Torah scholars in Israel who live by the plain and simple meaning of the RaMBaM's Mishneh Torah and actively encourage others to do so. Most of us belong to the mainstream "Baladi" Yemenite Jewish community, continuing the tradition of living by the Mishneh Torah since the very days when the RaMBaM lived, and are students of the Rav Yosef ben-Dawid QaafiH zS"l (the leading rabbinical expert in recent generations on the teachings of the RaMBaM in general and on his Mishneh Torah in particular).

But we have been helped in developing our Written and Oral Torah texts and freeware programs since 1990 by dozens of others from all well-known parts of observant Judaism, including Chasidim and Mitnagdim, Asheknazim and Sepharadim, Europeans and Orientals, both from inside Israel and from all over the diaspora aside from Antarctica (are there no observant Jews in Antarctica who want to help?).

We are currently particularly looking for proofreaders to help us polish the Yerushalmi. If you want to help us in our work, You may also help us by providing financial support for our work.

Mishneh Torah was the first, and is still the only, full codification of all of the divine laws of the special covenant between the LORD YHWH and Israel as well as the general Noachide covenant between the LORD YHWH and the Gentiles (no, we do not mean the so-called "New Testament"), with all of the rabbinic legislation developed in accordance with those laws: for all people, for all places, and for all times (until the reestablishment of the Sanhedrin in Israel--may we be blessed to reestablish it, in our time!).

Our original main purpose in this site was to put before you (whether Jew or Gentile) the most accurate currently available version of the Mishneh Torah Code in its entirety, to provide you with guidance for its proper study and understanding, and to encourage you to actually observe its clear and brief formulation of the divine laws. But we soon realized that since the Oral Law and the Written Law are ultimately one and they should be learned and observed together, we needed to complete our online Torah-learning resources by adding the Hebrew Bible in various versions tailored to the needs of learners at differing stages in their learning.

Our version of Mishneh Torah in its Hebrew original has been carefully edited according to the majority of the Yemenite manuscripts, and we are certain that there is today no more accurate version of Mishneh Torah available either in print or for computer. Despite that, we continue to check the versions of the manuscripts for further refinements of our text.

There is much additional Hebrew documentation about us and our work elsewhere on this site.

If you have any questions or comments, We intend to answer all real (non-junk non-virus) mail within a day or two; so if you do not hear from us within three days, please write again assuming that either your letter or our answer has been lost, which is hardly rare these days. Note that letters with attached programs that can be run and letters with huge attachments are automatically rejected. The hundreds of letters we get each month have helped us improve the site greatly, and we thank you for your on-going help: God bless you all!